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About a month into the NHL season, the Maple Leafs are in search of elusive things.

Morgan Rielly, for instance, is searching for the balance that will allow him to unleash his knack for offence while head coach Mike Babcock keeps asking him for defence, defence, defence. Juggling his role as Toronto’s No. 1 shutdown defenceman is no easy feat, especially when Babcock has mostly left him off the power-play rotation.

So maybe Friday night breakout performance in his team’s bounce-back 6-3 win over the Philadelphia Flyers will be the harbinger of two-way prosperity. Rielly had a goal — a power-play goal, even — and three assists as the Maple Leafs shook off the memory of Tuesday’s 7-0 loss to the L.A. Kings with a four-goal third period to seal their a victory.

It was a night of individual milestones. It was Rielly’s first four-point game as an NHLer. And playing in his 250th career NHL game, the power-play goal also amounted to his 100th career NHL point.

Asked if he was surprised to find himself on the ice with a man advantage — he ranks first on the team in ice time but 10th in power-play ice time, after all — Rielly chuckled.

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“A little bit, yeah,” he said. “It hasn’t been happening much and I’ve been okay with that. But (Babcock) seemed to think he wanted me out there. I think he just wanted two D-men, just trying to keep a lead. I just got lucky, I guess. I might have been the first person he saw.”

Rielly said the most important thing was Toronto’s fourth win in five games, of course. Still, on a night when he assisted on goals by Nazem Kadri, Mitch Marner and Martin Marincin, he acknowledged that the deluge of points was nice.

“It’s nice to get the first (goal) out of the way, get the goose-egg off the stat sheet,” Rielly said. “I’ve really not being thinking about (points) at all. I’ve just been trying to play my role, which is matchups. I haven’t really been thinking about points or the power play.”

The same probably couldn’t be said of Zach Hyman and Leo Komarov. About a month into the season, they were searching for the same thing: their first goal. They both found it on Friday night. Hyman potted what turned out to be the winner — this after he banged in the rebound of an Auston Matthews blast off the crossbar. Komarov netted a short-handed insurance marker. And both can only hope the respective icebreakers will forecast more to come.

Also on the first-goal train: Marincin, whose blast from the point tied it at 3-3 early in the third period to cue the comeback. Given it was Marincin’s third goal in 161 NHL games, it’s a decent bet he’s not expecting an ensuing avalanche of offence.

“Marty’s a defender. Every once in a while you shoot it in the net. Good for you. You feel good, but he’s a defender,” Babcock said.

But for the more offensively inclined, a possibly important night.

“It’s huge,” Rielly said. “Hyman’s been playing great. He hasn’t been getting a lot of attention just because of the linemates he’s playing with (mostly Matthews and William Nylander). He does the little things really well. He’s a big part of our penalty kill. For him to get his first and get that out of the way . . . Leo getting his shorty — we’re all very happy for him. Hopefully they can get rolling now.”

They’ll roll onto Pittsburgh for a Saturday-night back-to-back with 15 points in 14 games, something resembling a playoff pace, albeit with many months ahead. At least they could call themselves the winners of Friday’s showdown of own-zone liabilities. Coming into the game the Maple Leafs were allowing more goals per game than any team in the league (3.62). The Flyers, at 3.57, were the league’s fourth-most-inept defensive squad.

Some of that comes down to goaltending, to be sure. Leafs starter Frederik Andersen is still searching for something, too. It’s called consistency. He’s been specializing in its opposite. Maybe memories of Friday’s win, wherein Andersen turned a shaky beginning into a lockdown finish as the Leafs unleashed a four-goal third period, will turn out to be a source of requisite confidence.

Some of it probably comes down to coaching. Said Babcock before the game: “If you’re the coach of a team that’s giving up the most goals in the league … you’ve got to have a look (at yourself) right there.”

But Babcock said it also came down to his players paying attention to the defensive details.

“When it’s going in your net all the time, it’s not going in their net, so you’re playing in the wrong zone,” Babcock said. “So that’s the work zone. The speed zone is the neutral zone, and the fun zone is the one you want to play in, so you’d better learn how to play without (the puck) so you can spend more time in the fun zone.”

Speaking of searching, Babcock blended his lines with some abandon on Friday. He moved Nylander off the Matthews line in favour of Connor Brown. At one point he had Marner playing with Komarov and Nazem Kadri, who scored the game’s opening goal. Nylander, meanwhile, played for stretches alongside James van Riemsdyk and Tyler Bozak.

Matthews failed to score for his eighth straight game. But he fired a point-blank chance over the net and was credited with an assist for his crossbar shot converted by Hyman.

“I thought Matthews played real well tonight without the puck,” Babcock said. “He gets tons of chances every night. Just keep playing well and you’ll fill the net …”

The search continues, in other words, but Friday’s discoveries made it a momentarily happier quest.

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